


visitation rights

by pensee



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Canon Divergence, Gen, Hannibal Lecter Being Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal is "Dad", Imprisoned Hannibal, Kid Fic, M/M, Molly and Wally are background characters, No real context, Or A/B/O whatever works, Post Mpreg, Will is "Daddy", now with fanart, switching POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-05-12 17:48:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19234090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensee/pseuds/pensee
Summary: Hannibal has talked to his son over the phone a total of thirty times, minus two opportunities due to the turmoil surrounding his trial.Edit on 08-05. Chapter 2 drabble with fanart now included.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What it says on the tin. Hannibal’s crimes are the exact opposite of a positive male role model, but he inexplicably nonetheless gets to visit with his and Will’s son over the phone while being imprisoned in the BSHCI. 
> 
> The book version of Hannibal was incarcerated for eight years (?), versus the show version at three. Since this makes more sense with the book’s version of events, Hannibal’s been in prison for about four years already at the time of this fic (and plans to continue to be for however long it takes for Will to realize he can’t live without him).  
> I wanted to write a long, drawn-out explanatory fic for how this all happened, but this is all that was really coherent in my mind. It’s up to you how old their kid (Isaac) is, but he’s in school and talking.

“I’ll give you one day of every month. Every last day. I want to be a bigger person than you were to me,” he remembers Will telling him, changing his life in an instant.

 

 

 

Hannibal has talked to his son over the phone a total of thirty times, minus two opportunities due to the turmoil surrounding his trial. Isaac does not know his real name yet, but there were videos and audio floating around of him addressing his attorney in court, and Will was not ready to take the chance that their son would recognize an old voice recording of him on television from their monthly phone calls.

So, Hannibal waited, and thought. Suffered a loss of his drawing supplies after Alana, offering a good-intentioned favor to an inept colleague, had the audacity to poke him after he returned from the first day of trial. He sent her colleague home in tears, and she retaliated in the ways she presumed would be the most effective, sweeping his cell clean of the tangible things that most amused him.

“Your call,” she says now, the slight hiss of the automatic doors to his glass-encased suite announcing her arrival.

Ten-oh-five. Five minutes late.

“Tardiness shouldn’t be encouraged, Alana,” he says, repeating back from the BSHCI’s staff book of general orders. “Supper served promptly at seven o’clock. Return to cells at eight, relaxation until lights out at ten.

“Getting suspicious?” he adds, gesturing to the chair the orderly pulls up, closer than usual. Listening in, perhaps?

Alana raises an eyebrow but otherwise tries to keep her expression flat.

“Denise will be here to monitor what you say. The state’s implemented a new law restricting the rights of high-risk prisoners, and since you haven’t officially been declared insane, you’re still subject to the law.”

She leaves without another look back, and he knows she’s fleeing because he’ll see what she doesn’t want him to if she remains any longer. With Verger money, she could single-handedly keep this facility running for the next few centuries, but he thinks she must be worrying over the state and federal authorities playing hot potato with the only cannibal currently in her custody. If the law finds him guilty and legally liable for his actions, he will not continue to wither under her wing.

He will rot in a federal facility far enough away from her reach instead. Perhaps manipulate some eager, vulnerable minds to do his bidding where she cannot hope to control the outcome.

But this is all in the unseen future, as he has not been tried in federal court yet, and Metcalfe is still waiting on a re-trial in the state of Maryland. Prosecutorial misconduct.

Tsk-tsk.

“Good evening, Denise,” he belatedly greets the orderly outside the glass, and she grunts, rolling her eyes when she thinks he is not looking. However irritating these small gestures are, she is efficient and quiet when the staff tasked with barbering him invade his cell, and so he decides her behavior is charming rather than punishable.

“Dr. Bloom’s feeling generous, so I’ll start the clock now, and you hand the phone back at eleven-oh-seven. If you don’t comply, I’ll mace you, and myself and another orderly will come in there and subdue you until the phone’s back out here. Understand?”

“Thank you,” he smiles, and accepts the phone through the meal slot.

“Hello?” he says, and a loud shriek issues from the other end of the line.

“Dad, dad, I told Wally he was just a big baby and he fell asleep _before_ me, I told him so!” Isaac replies, in a loud whisper. Hannibal’s smile widens as he hears Will shush their son in the background, muffled by the static on the landline.

Somewhere in his memory palace, the accompanying figures of Will and their child come to life—Isaac sprawled out on the floor with a half dozen coloring books open around him, Will curled up on a Queen Anne sofa, a glass of whiskey in his hand. In his mind, they are happy, and he can join them any time he pleases, without hearing the extra noise of Molly and her child anywhere in the house.

When he opens his eyes next, Denise is sitting in the chair across from him reading the latest issue of _Daily Life_ , and Isaac is walking around his cell, gleefully pulling books off shelves and disturbing the few postcards of Florence that Alana had allowed him to keep.

“Dad?” Isaac asks, softer. “Um, you’re real quiet. Daddy said you were traveling again.”

This is what Will has told him for the last four years, and Hannibal does not dispute the excuse.

“I am,” he says. “But I am never too busy to talk with you, sweetheart.”

This is good news; for every month of silence, Isaac stores up what feels like years of stories. In his absence, hearing Isaac discuss even the the most mundane topics takes on a layer of privilege.

If they spoke at all anymore, Will would tell him that it was a privilege, not a right, to talk with their son.

“Have you been to Disneyworld, ever? Wally doesn’t want to go, but his friends from next door invited him. They’re real close, closer than I am to them, but they invited me, too. I don’t really like them as much, but I want to go! It sounds fun, Daddy said there are little parts of other countries there, and so many places to eat, and roller coasters. I went on a roller coaster last summer, when we went to the water park, but I wanna go on a different one this time…”

Had Hannibal acted earlier, and spirited Will away to someplace where they both would’ve been forgotten, he could have given Isaac chances to see a thousand different theme parks, all over the world. Tolerated the nauseating scents of industrial cleaner, crushes of sweaty tourists, and fatty carnival foods, to make his son happy.

He had expected (not hoped, hoped was too helpless a word) Will to accept him someday, would ask him to slow his pathology without stopping it completely, but now he was reduced to waiting for Will to come around. This was what they agreed, though he had not thought Will would’ve moved onto someone else so quickly.

“Would you ever like to go to Japan? Someone I know has many summer homes there, and there is a Disney park in Tokyo as well.”

“I never thought about it,” Isaac says, very serious, and Hannibal wonders what he looks like, his brow creased in concentration, tongue squeezed between his teeth? “Wally likes that anime stuff, you know, cartoons. I dunno, Daddy never takes us anywhere ‘cept to Grandpa’s, and Molly works a lot of the time. She said we probably can’t go to Disneyworld anyway, because of school.”

Hannibal’s eye twitches at the thought of _his_ son acknowledging Molly’s sire as his grandfather, but he forges on.

“You started preschool this spring. How is that?”

Isaac lets out a long, quizzical noise.

“It’s okay. Daddy has a lot more things to read at home, and the paints at school are super yucky cuz everyone sticks their hands in the same containers. I was already friends with my classmate Ginger from swimming lessons, but now I’m friends with her friend Matt. He’s got bright red hair! He said his Mom lets him color it.”

“Do you want bright red hair, too, Isaac?” he asks. “I’ll have to talk with Daddy before either of us give permission.”

“No,” Isaac sighs. “Well, I mean, Matt used to have bright red hair. It’s against the rules to do that, I guess, so they made him wash it out. Mrs. Young didn’t like it, even if everyone else did.”

Hannibal runs his tongue over his teeth. A point of interest.

“You told me Mrs. Kathy was your teacher, the last time we talked. Is Mrs. Young new?”

“Yeah, Dad, she’s new. Well, that’s just because I went to Klein-Stern before, but that closed, so now Daddy and Molly sent me to Bay Ridge Youngste—.”

A warning noise in the background cuts off what Isaac is about to say. Will now, telling Isaac to turn off the TV and get ready for bed. Hannibal recognizes the soundtrack for the children’s television series _Rocket Robots_ , and his eyes narrow in irritation. Denise peers up at him from over her magazine, flashes him the time on her smart watch. Ten minutes left.

There is an edge of tension in Will’s voice as he repeats his request, and Isaac lets out a dramatic whine.

“ _Daddy_ —,” Isaac argues to Will, but Will is having none of it, and Hannibal exhales gratefully as the annoying television music stops.

“Dad, Daddy’s being a meanie,” he whines, and Will chuckles, much closer to the mouthpiece.

“Don’t try to turn him against me,” Hannibal hears Will say, Will’s throat closing up on the last word, once he realizes the unspoken threat in what he’s said.

Hannibal eyes the keycard ID pinned to Denise’s lapel. It will open the door to his cell, and the automatic doors to the surrounding corridor, but there are two separate keycards and two more physical keys required to exit through the ward. This is information that is useless now, but soon, perhaps, the tide may shift in his favor.

“There’s no risk of that, my darling,” he says, wondering if Will is close enough to hear.

Denise puts down her magazine.

“Time’s up,” she says, frowning a bit at the unusual pet name—by now, she knows he calls Isaac “sweetheart”—but wisely not commenting on it further.

“It’s eleven-oh-seven, Isaac. I have to go now,” he says, gently as possible, and Isaac huffs.

“Okay, Dad. G’night. Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

“Goodnight, Isaac,” he says, trying to identify the strange emotion that swells up as he hears the phone clatter, Isaac going off to a life without him as easily as a snake sheds its skin, routinely and without a second thought.

Isaac cannot be expected to feel anything for someone who is hardly in his life, but Hannibal is not blessed with such a laissez faire attitude towards their relationship.

His perceptions and manipulations can do him no good if hundreds of miles separate him from his family. It tugged at him, that no one had yet taught Isaac to start organizing his thoughts and experiences into a place where they could all be together, regardless of physical the distance between them.

Will had been the one to always hold Isaac, hear his first word, watch him take his first steps, Hannibal less than a bystander who usually did not even have the benefit of tabloid news fodder to help in constructing the tentative mental image he had built of his son.

Despite the objective selfishness of his past actions, he did not wish to willingly abandon his family in the most precarious and most precious time of Isaac’s earliest years.

“Time,” Denise says again, and he is ready to hand the phone back, but the dial tone has not sounded on the other end of the line. The call is still in progress.

A shuffle, then a soft sigh.

“Will,” he says, unsure of whether he has picked up the phone to replace it or whether Molly has wandered into the living room.

Another sigh.

“Tell him I miss him,” he manages, which is overestimating himself, missing a son he never knew.

“Hannibal,” Will says finally, and this is the first time they’ve interacted since they saw one another at his first trial. Old Spice and fear sweat, though the media—not Hannibal—was the thing he was frightened of.

“He knows.”

Will hangs up without another word, but these three words are more than he was willing to part with in the past four years.

“Mace, Doctor Lecter,” Denise reminds testily, and he passes the phone back with a mild expression most people who did not know him would say constituted gratitude.

“Goodnight, Denise,” he says. “Thank you so much.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, skeptical, and wheels the phone out of the room, the lights dying as she departs.

_A good night_ , he muses, settling down to sleep.

In a week, a month, or six, Alana will return his stationary to him, and he will resume his writing. She can monitor his conversations or stand at his shoulder, but she has been fooled in the past and can be fooled again.

He thinks on the opportunities still available to him, right under her nose.

Though they were usually detestable, perhaps one of his many pen-and-paper correspondents would not object to finding out a bit of information about the location of a particular children’s school, and thus a ballpark estimate of his family’s current household, for an untraceable paycheck and a signed letter in his own hand. One needed to exploit the resources one had, after all.

And with that thought, he smiles to himself, reclining on his cot.

_Yes, a very good night indeed_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We’ll always have a Memory Palace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little drabble a day keeps the plot bunnies happy...
> 
> For time reference, this takes place a few years after chapter 1.  
> This chapter is Will’s POV.
> 
> Thank you to anyone who commented to ask for more or left kudos on chapter 1!!!  
> For anyone interested in my meta on this verse or any other, my Twitter’s linked with my art.

Sometimes, when the house is extra noisy—less so when the house is still; he’s nearly mastered how to manage his thoughts when there’s too much empty time to himself—with the chatter of six of Isaac’s classmates fighting over controllers for a violent video game they’ve slipped past Molly’s radar, Will’s learned that it’s too easy to retreat to one of the more dangerous places he’s left behind, if only to get some peace and quiet.

Travel to a place in his mind made of gold-accented walls and bookshelves that stretch to the ceiling, all accoutrements to conceal the utilitarianism of a reinforced glass prison cell. A place that used to be Chilton’s old office, or so Tattle Crime had claimed.

The hallway is dark but not particularly long, though he feels as if he is one of Dante’s pilgrims (Bedelia’s own words from that dreadful book, he thinks, with a wry sort of disdain), descending into the pit.

Here, Hannibal is never just waiting for him. Here, he steps through the walls of his cell like they are nothing more than air, and puts his hand on the side of Will’s face, to bring him closer, to scent him in order to discern if anything’s changed.

Monsters can smell fear, and in this place, Hannibal may be able to scent so much more.

Trepidation. Anger. A yearning for indifference toward a creature that had caused him so much pain.

But their broken bond is not his priority, Will guesses. Hannibal is always planning, weaving contingencies from dust and dreams, and Isaac is a wild card.

It’s Isaac he is concerned about. Their son is half of himself and half of Will, after all, and he is not sure whether Dad’s nature or Daddy’s nurture would win out.

To catch the vaguest hint of Isaac, remaining on Will’s clothes, Hannibal draws him closer still, and Will, for whatever mystery lies in his subconscious, doesn’t try to fight being pulled into Hannibal’s hold.

Will often dreams of these encounters, so far outside of the control over his waking thoughts, impossible as they are.

(He once received a letter from the state of Maryland, care of the FBI, saying that they were sorry, but given his history with BSHCI patient B5160-8, he could not be added to the hospital’s visitor list despite patient B5160-8’s attorney’s repeated requests. He doesn’t know if it thrills or appalls him that Hannibal had held out hope Will would come back on his own, figuratively or literally.)

“I’ve missed you,” is something that Hannibal always says here, though Will can never, for the life of him, remember what he says back.

There’s been mostly silence between them in reality (only short snippets of niceties for Isaac’s sake), but he sometimes wakes from sleep with his throat hoarse, Molly snoring quietly in her sleep beside him, as if he has been speaking without rest to an invisible conversational partner.

When he wakes, the Hannibal that lives in his head is often returned to his cell, though Will is left with the startling impression of the other man’s palm pressed against the glass, before he shakes away the vision and gets out of bed to prepare for the day.

Sometimes, after he and Molly tuck Isaac in, he waits in the doorway and feels someone bleed out of the shadows and into the empty space behind him. He looks at Isaac’s sleeping face in the glow of the nightlight, and finds the glass cell rising out of the darkness towards them as well.

And this time, instead of blinking awake, Will walks slowly towards their son, then beyond him to the endless pane of glass that contains the perpetrator of so many crimes, least of all the ones against their shattered family.

But there is no consequence for pity or understanding here, so Will allows himself a moment of weakness, a moment for his hard heart to soften.

Hannibal’s palm has left a perfect impression on the surface of it, and Will mirrors the motion, fingertips hovering over the cold cell wall.

> no good at giving you up. [#traditionalart](https://twitter.com/hashtag/traditionalart?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [#pen](https://twitter.com/hashtag/pen?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [#penart](https://twitter.com/hashtag/penart?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [#ink](https://twitter.com/hashtag/ink?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [#fanart](https://twitter.com/hashtag/fanart?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [#Hannibal](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Hannibal?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [#Hannigram](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Hannigram?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [pic.twitter.com/ieps7Aeq5w](https://t.co/ieps7Aeq5w)
> 
> — Ivy (@penseeart) [August 5, 2019](https://twitter.com/penseeart/status/1158240849479655425?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I did a warmup drawing, and then had to write this.

**Author's Note:**

> Uhhhh, happy dad’s day??? *nervous laughter*  
> Just in case this needs to actually be said: Don’t be like Hannibal.


End file.
